DONETSK, August 09, /ITAR-TASS/. The newly-appointed prime minister of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic says he sees many similarities between the current situation in Donbass and the South Ossetian crisis of six years ago.

Aleksandr Zakharchenko expressed this opinion of his in a special message to the South Ossetian people on the occasion of the 6th anniversary of Georgia’s armed aggression of August 2008 and Russia’s peace-making intervention that followed the next day.

“Memories of August 8, 2008 will live on in the minds of the Ossetian people and of all those who witnessed one of the most heinous crimes against humanity committed in the territory of what was once an integral state - the Soviet Union, and in the minds of other peoples who had lived side by side in peace and accord for many decades,” Zakharchenko said in a message published by the Donetsk People’s Republic’s press-centre.

“The blood-soaked land of Donetsk is appealing to common sense, it is pleading for compassion and calling upon the world community and the fraternal peoples to stop the blood bath. The long-suffering land of South Ossetia was doing precisely the same in the terrible days of August 2008,” said Zakharchenko, who took office on Friday.

He voiced the certainty that friendship between the Donetsk People’s Republic and South Ossetia would be getting stronger.

Earlier in the day South Ossetian President Leonid Tibilov said Ukraine had fallen victim to what he described as a “monopolar game” being conducted by the same forces that had pushed Georgia towards the decision to attack South Ossetia in August 2008.

“Today there is Kiev with the territory under its control, and there are the Donetsk and Lugansk republics existing separately from it. This is a hard fact,” Tibilov said.